“This Lovely Land Is Mine” Milk and Honey’s Restorative Nostalgia for Israel Jessica Hillman This is the place where the hopes of the homeless and the dreams of the lost combine. This is the land that heaven blessed, and this lovely land is mine! — Don Appell and Jerry Herman (1961: act I, scene 3, line 26) These lyrics — from the title song of the 1961 musical Milk and Honey — encapsulate the multi­ layered political and cultural implications throughout this seemingly simple Broadway musi­ cal. With their call to both the recent and ancient past, and their vigorous claim of ownership in the present, Jerry Herman’s words, and the musical as a whole, negotiate a delicate balance between pride and sorrow. With music and lyrics by Herman and libretto by Don Appell, Milk and Honey was the first major Broadway musical to take Jews as its central characters, present­ ing a then unique setting and subject matter: the new state of Israel. Its pioneer status situates Milk and Honey as a cultural document revealing American Jewish attitudes toward the young country, and one of the central reasons for its existence: the Holocaust. Through old­fashioned TDR: The Drama Review 55:3 (T211) Fall 2011. ©2011 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 31 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00092 by guest on 03 October 2021 Broadway escapism and exoticism, Milk and Honey superficially glorifies the present and future of an exciting new land. More deeply, as a reaction to sublimated grief and disavowal of the Holocaust, we find “restorative nostalgia” for Israel’s roots in the biblical homeland, the titular land of milk and honey. Background In 1960 producer Gerard Oestreicher hired Jerry Herman, then a young composer in his 20s, to write a musical about Israel. Oestreicher was likely inspired by the huge success of Exodus, both the Leon Uris novel published in 1958, and the film version released in 1960.1 Herman, later famous for razzle dazzle Broadway musical spectacles focusing on larger­than­life diva roles (Hello Dolly [1964], Mame [1966], La Cage Aux Folles [1983]) was at this point young, unknown, and eager for his Broadway break. Oestreicher arranged a trip for Herman and librettist Don Appell to Israel so that they could witness the country’s 13th Independence Day celebration. He wanted them to soak up the atmosphere and emerge with an idea for a musical with no pre­ existing source material. Israel’s government treated the authors “like royalty” according to Herman (1996:39). Oestreicher had contacted them, and, says Herman, told them: “[W]e were coming to write this very happy and very positive show about their country. The government was thrilled about the whole idea, of course, because Israel still had an image problem in 1960 and publicity wasn’t all that terrific” (39–40). As Herman remembers, “The Israeli government people were so thrilled that we weren’t going to write a play about Israel­embattled­with­gun­in­hand, but rather one that might encourage tourism, that they rolled out the red carpet and had a black limousine at our hotel every morning” (in Citron 2004:48). Disappointed that their tour only included government­ approved sections of Israel, Herman snuck away with Appell to tour the country, including its border towns. Herman saw some darker sides to the new state that concerned him, including the Israeli/Arab conflict, but admits that very little that was not positive made it into the final show, calling it a “valentine” to Israel (41). Herman and Appell decided to center their musical on a second­chance love affair between two American Jews visiting Israel. Ruth, part of a tour group of man­hungry American widows, meets Phil, who is on his way to visit his daughter on a moshav, or collective farm, where she lives with her Israeli husband. Ruth and Phil begin an affair and she joins him on his visit to the moshav, where they witness the more permissive Israeli lifestyle. Eventually Ruth breaks off their affair because Phil has not yet officially ended his loveless first marriage.Milk and Honey opened on Broadway on 10 October 1961 at the Martin Beck Theatre, starring opera singers Mimi Benzell and Robert Weede and Yiddish theatre star Molly Picon. It closed on 26 January 1963. 1. Milk and Honey, when completed, resembled Exodus in its worshipful and inspirational tone. The lyrics quoted above also echo a song from the Exodus soundtrack, “This land is mine, God gave this land to me” (Gold 1960). Figure 1. (previous page) Milk and Honey, 1961. Music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, book by Don Appell, directed by Albert Marre. Photos of the chorus show young, scantily clad male and female dancers in the face of a stormy desert backdrop. (Photo courtesy Photofest) Jessica Hillman is Assistant Professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia. She received her BA degree in Theatre History from Cornell University and her MA and PhD from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has recently published articles in Theatre Topicsand Studies in Musical Theatre. Her book on Nazism and the Holocaust on the American musical stage is forthcoming from McFarland Press. [email protected] Jessica Hillman 32 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00092 by guest on 03 October 2021 Restorative Nostalgia The definition of “nostalgia” encompasses homesickness and wistful, sentimental longing. With the Diaspora as a defining characteristic of Judaism, the idea of homesickness for Israel has lasted for thousands of years, and wistful or sentimental longing for the biblical past has been elaborated throughout centuries of Jewish literature and culture. The constructed concepts of both Israel and nostalgia, however, are equally intricate and problematic. Svetlana Boym’s defi­ nitions, in The Future of Nostalgia (2001), can help to contextualize Milk and Honey’s perspective towards Israel. Boym separates nostalgia into two discrete categories, calling her first “restor­ ative,” which as the name implies, looks to reestablish the longed­for past and denies itself as nostalgia. Boym argues, “Restorative nostalgia does not think of itself as nostalgia, but rather as truth and tradition” (xviii). She continues: “Nostalgia is an ache of temporal distance and dis­ placement. Restorative nostalgia takes care of both of these symptoms. Distance is compensated by intimate experience and the availability of a desired object. Displacement is cured by a return home, preferably a collective one” (46). The extent of Milk and Honey’s Israeli patriotism implies a restorative nostalgia for the Promised Land, granted to first Abraham, then Isaac in the book of Genesis.2 Rather than ache for a distant past, the Israeli characters in the musical fight to restore the conditions of that past, to intimately experience their connection to the land, and thereby to return to a collective home. In the early years of Israel’s existence, optimism and collective memory for biblical Israel emphasized that restoration of the biblical past was possible. With pride in their God­given birthright, Israelis worked to make the land green again, bolstered by Jews around the world sending money to plant trees in the desert. Milk and Honey reflects this hopeful and industrious atmosphere by aiming to deny memory and instead displaying a resolutely forward­looking sur­ face, hoping to reinstate the glories of the land of Canaan. Milk and Honey’s content, as well as its form, argues for restorative nostalgia. The title song’s lyrics that opened this essay offer hints of the emotion behind the musical’s fervent Israeli loyalty: This is the land of Milk and Honey This is the land of sun and song And this a world of good and plenty Humble and proud and young and strong and This is the place where the hopes of the homeless And the dreams of the lost combine. This is the land that heaven blessed And this lovely land is mine! (1961:I.3.25) This song acts as an anthem, glorifying the ideas upon which Israel was founded. Its imagery insists on youth, strength, happiness, and moral certitude. Importantly it ends with, “and this lovely land is mine” (italics added) — a defiant claim of ownership not to be denied. The lyric, “hopes of the homeless and the dreams of the lost,” offers the historical view of Jews, home­ less since the Diaspora. The phrase “milk and honey” first appears in the Bible in the book of Milk and Honey Exodus 3:8 and refers to the bounty of the land of Canaan, promised to the Jews. Therefore the title itself offers a restorative nostalgic perspective. Early drafts were titled Shalom; the shift to Milk and Honey cannot be a coincidence. The new title sums up the historically laden thematic concerns. Israel was the land of milk and honey thousands of years ago, and although that agri­ ’s Restorative Nostalgia cultural abundance had been lost, Milk and Honey’s characters — through energy, lust for life, 2. Milk and Honey also utilizes Boym’s second category, “reflective nostalgia,” through echoes of the dying New York Yiddish Theatre, ghosted on the stage through star Molly Picon’s performance. Herman’s musical complicates Boym’s discrete categories by exhibiting both restorative and reflective nostalgia, interacting in surprising ways. 33 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00092 by guest on 03 October 2021 and hard work — find the road back to that ancient success. Israel offers an active site of nostal­ gia, despite its temporal remove of thousands of years.